Speaker 1: Now one of your pudding.
Speaker 2: I got a string going on here, something.
Speaker 1: Just because my dog.
Speaker 2: Something killed your dog. My dog. We're flying through the
Speaker 2: air over the tree. I don't know how it did it, Okay, Damn,
Speaker 2: I'm really confused. All I saw was my dog coming
Speaker 2: over the fence and he was dead.
Speaker 1: And once you hit the ground like, I didn't see
Speaker 1: any cars.
Speaker 2: All I saw was my dog coming over the fence. Sat,
Speaker 2: what are you putting?
Speaker 3: We got some wonder or something crawling around out here?
Speaker 2: Did you see what it was or was it was?
Speaker 2: Standing enough. I'm out here looking through the window now
Speaker 2: and I don't see anything. I don't want to go outside.
Speaker 2: Jesus Quice, you better.
Speaker 3: Hello, get the body out here when I'm out there.
Speaker 3: I thought of Amna about Tech forty nine. I don't
Speaker 3: know easy Ann out there?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm walking right.
Speaker 3: Head uh, Chapter thirty, Witnesses to Wonder. The months that
Speaker 3: followed were the most productive of my podcasting career. Armed
Speaker 3: with the information from the Men in Black's folder, used
Speaker 3: on my own terms as Daniel had suggested, and driven
Speaker 3: by the Mount Saint Helen's revelations that proved decades of
Speaker 3: government cover up, I threw myself into the work with
Speaker 3: renewed purpose. The interviews became sharper, more focused, the episodes
Speaker 3: became more substantive, The audience continued to grow, and the
Speaker 3: stories kept coming. From northern Minnesota, I interviewed a conservation
Speaker 3: officer named Margaret Lynfist, who'd spent thirty years patrolling the
Speaker 3: boundary waters. I've seen things up there that I can't explain,
Speaker 3: Margaret said, her Scandinavian accent softened by decades in the
Speaker 3: American Midwest. Things that don't fit in any guidebook or
Speaker 3: training manual. Can you give me an example? The winter
Speaker 3: of two thousand and eight, I was on a solo
Speaker 3: patrol near the Canadian border, checking ice conditions on some
Speaker 3: of the larger lakes. It was January, maybe twenty below zero,
Speaker 3: wind chill even worse, not a day when anything should
Speaker 3: be moving around.
Speaker 2: What happened.
Speaker 3: I was on the ice halfway across Gunflint Lake when
Speaker 3: I saw something on the shore. At first I thought
Speaker 3: it was a moose. We get big ones up there,
Speaker 3: but the proportions were wrong too upright, two human shaped.
Speaker 2: What did it do?
Speaker 3: It watched me stood there at the tree line for
Speaker 3: maybe five minutes just watching. I had binoculars with me,
Speaker 3: but every time I tried to focus on it, my
Speaker 3: hand started shaking. I couldn't get a clear look from
Speaker 3: the cold, That's what I told myself. But it wasn't
Speaker 3: the cold. It was fear, pure, primal fear. Every instinct
Speaker 3: I had was screaming at me to get away from
Speaker 3: that thing, whatever it was. How did the encounter end?
Speaker 3: It turned and walked into the forest, disappeared between one
Speaker 3: step and the next. I finished my patrol as fast
Speaker 3: as I could and didn't go back to that lake
Speaker 3: for two years. Have you had other encounters since? Nothing
Speaker 3: visual but sounds. Yes, how's in the night wood?
Speaker 2: Knocking?
Speaker 3: Things moving through the brush that are too big and
Speaker 3: too quiet to be any animal. I know they're up there, Brian,
Speaker 3: in the deep wilderness, and they've been there a lot
Speaker 3: longer than we have. From Mississippi. I spoke with a
Speaker 3: man named Samuel Jackson, no relation to the actor, as
Speaker 3: he was quick to point out, who'd had an encounter
Speaker 3: in the bottom lands near the Big Black River. I
Speaker 3: was running a trot line for catfish. Samuel said his
Speaker 3: voice was deep, unhurried, with the patience of a man
Speaker 3: who'd spent his life on the water. This was back
Speaker 3: in ninety six. I'd been fishing that stretch of river
Speaker 3: for twenty year years, knew every bend and sandbar. But
Speaker 3: that night something was different, different, how quiet?
Speaker 2: Too quiet.
Speaker 3: The frog stopped singing, the owl stopped calling, even the
Speaker 3: river seemed to hush itself. And then I heard it,
Speaker 3: this splashing coming from upstream, big splashing, like a horse crossing.
Speaker 3: But there weren't any horses around for miles. Did you
Speaker 3: see anything? I did came around a bend in my
Speaker 3: john boat and saw it standing in the shallows, seven
Speaker 3: feet tall, maybe more, covered in dark hair, dripping wet.
Speaker 3: It had a fish in its hands, a big channel
Speaker 3: cat must have been thirty pounds, and it was eating
Speaker 3: it raw, just tearing into it like a dog with
Speaker 3: a bone. What happened when it saw you? It froze,
Speaker 3: looked at me with these yellow eyes. I'll never forget
Speaker 3: those eyes, reflecting my lantern light like mirrors. We stared
Speaker 3: at each other for what felt like forever, and then
Speaker 3: it made this sound, low and rumbling, like a warning.
Speaker 3: I took the hint, turned my boat around, and paddled
Speaker 3: like hell back to the landing. Did you ever return
Speaker 3: to that spot every season? Still fish there to this day.
Speaker 3: Never saw that creature again, but I feel it sometimes
Speaker 3: watching from the banks, keeping tabs on me. Samuel laughed,
Speaker 3: a deep, genuine sound. I leave an extra catfish for
Speaker 3: it now, just in case. Call it rent for fishing
Speaker 3: in its territory. From the mountains of West Virginia, I
Speaker 3: interviewed a coal miner named Thomas Adkins, whose encounter had
Speaker 3: happened deep underground. You heard me right, Thomas said, when
Speaker 3: I asked him to repeat himself. Underground in the mines,
Speaker 3: tell me about it. This was back in eighty nine.
Speaker 3: I was working the night shift at a deep mine
Speaker 3: near Beckley. We were opening a new section following a
Speaker 3: seam that went back into the mountain for miles and
Speaker 3: we hit something. What do you mean, hit something? A void,
Speaker 3: a cave natural formed right in the middle of the scene.
Speaker 3: The cutting machine broke through the wall and suddenly there
Speaker 3: was this opening, maybe ten feet wide, going back into darkness.
Speaker 3: What did you find at first?
Speaker 2: Nothing?
Speaker 3: Just a cave, big and empty. The foreman sent me
Speaker 3: and two other guys in to check if it was safe,
Speaker 3: if it connected to any other workings. We had our headlamps,
Speaker 3: our methane detectors, standard procedure, and about one hundred yards
Speaker 3: in we found tracks, footprints in the mud, bare feet,
Speaker 3: human shaped, but way too big. We followed them deeper,
Speaker 3: and that's when we started hearing it, hearing what breathing,
Speaker 3: heavy breathing echoing off the walls, and movement, something shuffling
Speaker 3: around in the dark, just beyond the reach of our lights.
Speaker 3: We could smell it too, that smell everyone talks about,
Speaker 3: like a wet dog and a garbage dump.
Speaker 2: Had a baby. What did you do?
Speaker 3: We got the hell out, ran all the way back
Speaker 3: to the main tunnel, told the foreman what we'd found,
Speaker 3: what we'd heard. He didn't believe us, of course, called
Speaker 3: us a bunch of superstitious fools. What happened to the cave?
Speaker 3: They sealed it up, built a concrete wall across the opening,
Speaker 3: and never spoke of it again. But I know what
Speaker 3: I heard in there, Brian. I know what was living
Speaker 3: in that darkness, and I wonder sometimes if it's still
Speaker 3: there waiting listening to us dig From the Bayous of Louisiana.
Speaker 3: I spoke with a woman named Celestine Thibodeaux, who was
Speaker 3: a practicing trader, a folk healer in the Cajun tradition.
Speaker 3: The lou garoo is what we call them, Celestine said.
Speaker 3: Her voice was thick with the accent of the Aischafalaya words,
Speaker 3: rolling together like the slow rivers of her homeland. The werewolf,
Speaker 3: the outsiders say, But that's not quite right. They're older
Speaker 3: than werewolves, older than any story we brought from France.
Speaker 3: Tell me about your experiences with them. I've seen them
Speaker 3: all my life. My grandmother saw them, Her grandmother saw them.
Speaker 3: They've always been here in the deep Bayous, where the
Speaker 3: water is black and the cypress grows thick. We don't
Speaker 3: fear them, We respect them. Have they ever harmed anyone?
Speaker 3: Only those who deserve it? Poachers sometimes men who take
Speaker 3: more than they need from the swamp. The loogaroo doesn't
Speaker 3: like waste, doesn't like greed. But if you live right,
Speaker 3: if you take only what you need and give back
Speaker 3: what you can, they leave you alone. Sometimes they even
Speaker 3: help help how My grandmother told a story about a
Speaker 3: child who got lost in the swamp three years old,
Speaker 3: wandered away from home during a flood. Search parties looked
Speaker 3: for days found nothing, and then on the fourth morning,
Speaker 3: the child appeared at the edge of the bayou, safe
Speaker 3: and sound. Said a big hairy man had carried her
Speaker 3: through the water, kept her warm at night, brought her
Speaker 3: back when the flood receded.
Speaker 2: Do you believe that story?
Speaker 3: I know it's true. That child was my grandmother, and
Speaker 3: she never forgot what the lu Garu did for her.
Speaker 3: She spent her whole life respecting them, teaching us to
Speaker 3: respect them. It's why I'm talking to you now, because
Speaker 3: the world needs to know that these beings aren't monsters.
Speaker 3: They're guardians, protectors, and they've been watching over us longer
Speaker 3: than we can remember. Each interview added another thread to
Speaker 3: the tapestry. Each witness added another voice to the chorus.
Speaker 3: The picture that was emerging was more complex than I'd
Speaker 3: ever imagined. Creatures not just hiding in the wilderness, but
Speaker 3: woven into the fabric of human culture, present in our stories,
Speaker 3: our legends, our deepest memories. They'd been with us all along,
Speaker 3: and now finally we were beginning to see them. Chapter
Speaker 3: thirty one, The storm gathers. The television offer came back
Speaker 3: around in the spring. Amanda, the producer from Meridian productions
Speaker 3: reached out again after a year of sar The industry,
Speaker 3: she explained, had changed. Streaming platforms were hungrier than ever
Speaker 3: for content. The success of certain paranormal and unexplained phenomena
Speaker 3: series had created an opening that hadn't existed before. We
Speaker 3: can do this right, she said, during a video call
Speaker 3: that lasted two hours. I've watched every episode of your podcast.
Speaker 3: I've read the transcripts. I understand what you're trying to do,
Speaker 3: and I want to help you do it on a
Speaker 3: bigger scale. I've seen what television does to stories like these,
Speaker 3: I said, the sensationalism, the manipulation, the focus on drama
Speaker 3: over truth. That's not what I'm proposing. Think of this
Speaker 3: as a documentary series, long form, substantive, respectful. We let
Speaker 3: the witnesses tell their stories. We present the evidence without editorializing.
Speaker 3: We treat the subject with the seriousness it deserves.
Speaker 2: And the network will allow that.
Speaker 3: The network is desperate for authentic com The audience is
Speaker 3: tired of fake reality shows and manufactured drama. They want
Speaker 3: something real. Your podcast proves there's a market for it.
Speaker 3: I thought about it, thought about the reach, the resources,
Speaker 3: the possibility of telling these stories. To millions of people
Speaker 3: who would never find the podcast on their own. I
Speaker 3: need to maintain editorial control, I said, Finally, final cut
Speaker 3: on every episode. No interviews used without the witness's explicit consent,
Speaker 3: No misleading edits, no manufactured drama, no sensationalism. Those are
Speaker 3: steep terms. Those are my terms. Take them or leave them.
Speaker 3: Amanda was quiet for a moment, then she smiled, I'll
Speaker 3: make it work. This is too important to let network
Speaker 3: politics get in the way. We shook hands virtually at least,
Speaker 3: and the deal was set. Sasquatch Odyssey was going to television.
Speaker 3: The first season would feature ten episodes, each one focused
Speaker 3: on a different region and its encounters. We'd start in
Speaker 3: the Pacific Northwest, the heartland of Sasquatch legend, and work
Speaker 3: our way across the country. I'd conduct the interviews, provide
Speaker 3: the narration, serve as the guide for audiences who were
Speaker 3: new to this world. The production was bigger than anything
Speaker 3: I'd experienced. Camera crews, sound technicians, editors, producers, a budget
Speaker 3: that dwarfed what I'd spent in three years of podcasting
Speaker 3: resources to investigate cases I'd never been able to pursue before.
Speaker 3: But the core of the show remained the same, the witnesses,
Speaker 3: their stories, their truth. We filmed the first episode in
Speaker 3: the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State, dense rainforest, ancient trees,
Speaker 3: a landscape that seemed to belong to another age. The
Speaker 3: witnesses we interviewed there had stories that went back generations.
Speaker 3: Families who'd lived alongside the creatures for one hundred years,
Speaker 3: who knew their territories and their habits the way you
Speaker 3: might know a neighbor. They're not animals, one elderly woman
Speaker 3: told us, sitting on the porch of a cabin her
Speaker 3: great grandfather had built. They're people different from us, but people,
Speaker 3: and they've been here longer than we have. We're the newcomers.
Speaker 3: We're the ones who don't belong. The second episode took
Speaker 3: us to the Ozarks, where Bobby Dean Carver served as
Speaker 3: our local guide. He'd become something of a celebrity since
Speaker 3: his podcast Interview, fielding inquiries from researchers and media outlets
Speaker 3: around the world, but he turned everyone else down. You're
Speaker 3: the only one I trust, he told me as we
Speaker 3: hiked into the hollers where he'd had his encounter. You
Speaker 3: don't make us look like fools. You don't twist our words,
Speaker 3: You just let us tell our stories. We filmed interviews
Speaker 3: with a dozen witnesses from the region, hunters, farmers, hikers,
Speaker 3: children who'd grown up seeing things their parents couldn't explain.
Speaker 3: The consistency of their accounts was remarkable. The same creatures,
Speaker 3: the same behaviors, the same sense of being watched by
Speaker 3: something that didn't want to be seen. By the time
Speaker 3: we finished filming in Arkansas, I knew we had something special,
Speaker 3: something that would reach people in ways the podcast never could.
Speaker 3: The third episode brought us back to the Pizga National Forest.
Speaker 3: It was strange returning to these mountains as a television
Speaker 3: host rather than a sheriff. The trails I'd walked, the clearings,
Speaker 3: I'd searched, the cave where Austin had vanished without a trace.
Speaker 3: All of it was familiar, but seen through new eyes.
Speaker 3: We filmed near some of the locations connected to his disappearance.
Speaker 3: The Austin Reeves case remained officially unsolved, another mystery in
Speaker 3: these ancient mountains, But the evidence we'd gathered, the mount
Speaker 3: Saint Helen's documents, the witness testimonies, the pattern of government
Speaker 3: cover ups all pointed to creatures that had been here
Speaker 3: far longer than any of us. Austin had gone looking
Speaker 3: for them, whether he'd found them, whether he was still
Speaker 3: alive somewhere in.
Speaker 2: These vast forests.
Speaker 3: Aimed the question that haunted me, the missing hikers, the
Speaker 3: strange sounds, the footprints that appeared on remote trails and
Speaker 3: vanished just as mysteriously, And stay tuned for more sasquatch
Speaker 3: ott to see.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back.
Speaker 3: After these messages, Zach appeared on camera sharing the research
Speaker 3: he'd spent years compiling. He was nervous at first. He'd
Speaker 3: spent his career avoiding attention, staying under the radar, But
Speaker 3: as the interview progressed, he relaxed, his passion for the
Speaker 3: truth overcoming his reluctance to be seen. The cover up
Speaker 3: is real, he told the camera. I've documented it for decades,
Speaker 3: Files suppressed, witnesses, silenced, evidence confiscated. Somebody doesn't want us
Speaker 3: to know what's out there. But the truth is coming
Speaker 3: out anyway. It can't be stopped. We were filming the
Speaker 3: fourth episode in the Pacific Northwest when everything changed. It
Speaker 3: started with a phone call from Daniel. You need to
Speaker 3: come home. Now, what's wrong? They came back, the men
Speaker 3: in black. But this time his voice broke. This time
Speaker 3: they didn't just threaten, They did something.
Speaker 2: Are you okay? I'm fine?
Speaker 3: But the house, Brian, the house is gone. What do
Speaker 3: you mean gone? Burned? Burned to the ground. Everything we had,
Speaker 3: all your research, all the equipment, everything, it's gone. I
Speaker 3: was on a plane within hours, leaving the production crew
Speaker 3: to finish without me. The flight felt endless, every minute
Speaker 3: stretching into an eternity of fear and rage and helplessness.
Speaker 3: When I finally arrived at our property, what I saw
Speaker 3: broke something inside me. The house was a ruin, blackened timbers,
Speaker 3: collapsed walls, ash where our life had been. The studio
Speaker 3: where I'd recorded hundreds of interviews, the office where i'd
Speaker 3: built the community, the bedroom where Daniel and I had
Speaker 3: dreamed of the future, all of it reduced to rubble.
Speaker 3: Daniel was standing at the edge of the debris, staring
Speaker 3: at what remained. I wrapped my arms around him and
Speaker 3: held on. I'm sorry, he whispered, I'm so sorry. I
Speaker 3: should have been here. I should have This isn't your fault,
Speaker 3: this is them. This is what they do when they
Speaker 3: can't control the narrative. What are we going to do?
Speaker 3: I looked at the ruins of our home, at the
Speaker 3: ashes of everything we'd built, and I felt something rising
Speaker 3: in me, not despair, but determination, a fire that matched
Speaker 3: the one they'd set. We rebuild, I said, and we
Speaker 3: keep going. They want us to give up, to be scared,
Speaker 3: to crawl away and hide, but that's not who we are,
Speaker 3: That's not who I am. The podcast is backed up,
Speaker 3: the interviews, the research, the community. It's all in the cloud.
Speaker 3: They burned down our house, but they didn't destroy our work.
Speaker 3: They didn't destroy us. Daniel looked at me, tears streaming
Speaker 3: down his face. You're not going to stop. I'm never
Speaker 3: going to stop, not until the truth is out, not
Speaker 3: until everyone knows what's been hidden, not until they can't
Speaker 3: silence us anymore. I turned away from the ruins and
Speaker 3: pulled out my phone. Called Amanda. We need to talk.
Speaker 3: I said, something's happened and the world needs to see it.
Speaker 3: The television series was about to get a lot more
Speaker 3: complicated and a lot more dangerous. Chapter thirty two, Ashes
Speaker 3: and Embers. The fire investigation was a farce. The county sheriff,
Speaker 3: my replacement. A man named Harold Weston, who'd run unopposed
Speaker 3: after I declined to seek re election, showed up with
Speaker 3: his deputies, took some photographs, asked a few questions, and
Speaker 3: declared the fire accidental faulty wiring. He said, these old
Speaker 3: mountain houses were fire traps. Sheriff Weston, I said, keeping
Speaker 3: my voice leveled, despite the race building in my chest.
Speaker 3: Our house was built in twenty nineteen. The wiring was
Speaker 3: inspected six months ago, and there were accelerant marks on
Speaker 3: the foundation that your investigators seem to have missed. Weston's
Speaker 3: face tightened. You're not a law enforcement officer anymore, Brian.
Speaker 3: Leave the investigating to the professionals. The professionals who concluded
Speaker 3: a two year old house caught fire from faulty wiring,
Speaker 3: The professionals who have jurisdiction here. He stepped closer, lowering
Speaker 3: his voice. I know what you've been doing, the podcast,
Speaker 3: the TV show, all that bigfoot nonsense. You've made some
Speaker 3: powerful enemies. Maybe this is a sign you should reconsider
Speaker 3: your priorities. Is that a threat? It's advice, take it
Speaker 3: or leave it. He walked away, his deputies trailing behind him.
Speaker 3: I watched them go. My hands clenched into fists. Daniel
Speaker 3: touched my arm. Let it go, Brian, fighting him won't
Speaker 3: change anything I know with this, I gestured at the ruins.
Speaker 3: This can't stand. They can't just burn down our home
Speaker 3: and walk away. Then make them pay, not with fists,
Speaker 3: with truth. Amanda flew in from Los Angeles the next day.
Speaker 3: She surveyed the damage, interviewed Daniel and me on camera,
Speaker 3: documented everything the Sheriff's department had conveniently overlooked. Her crew
Speaker 3: found the accelerant marks I'd mentioned. They found footprints that
Speaker 3: didn't match any of ours, boot prints military style, leading
Speaker 3: away from the house toward the road. This is going
Speaker 3: to be part of the series, Amanda said, the whole story,
Speaker 3: the investigation, the threats, the cover up, and now this.
Speaker 3: People need to see what they're doing to silence you.
Speaker 3: You're not afraid it'll make the network nervous. The network
Speaker 3: is already nervous. They've been getting pressure, vague calls from
Speaker 3: unnamed government sources, questions about our editorial standards, hints that
Speaker 3: our broadcast license might face screw. But they're standing firm.
Speaker 3: This story is too big to walk away from.
Speaker 2: What about you?
Speaker 3: Aren't you worried about becoming a target, Amanda smiled grimly.
Speaker 3: I've been a target before. Documentary filmmakers aren't popular with
Speaker 3: the powers that be, but you can't scare someone who's
Speaker 3: already committed to the truth. We moved into a rental
Speaker 3: cabin about ten miles from our property. It was smaller
Speaker 3: than the house we'd lost, but it was safe, or
Speaker 3: as safe as anywhere could be. Now, the community rallied
Speaker 3: around us. Donations poured in from podcast listeners and forum members,
Speaker 3: enough to replace the equipment we'd lost, enough to start rebuilding.
Speaker 3: Messages of support flooded my inbox, people who'd been inspired
Speaker 3: by the podcast, who'd found validation in the stories I'd shared,
Speaker 3: who wanted us to know we weren't alone. And the
Speaker 3: interviews continued. I refused to let the fire stop me.
Speaker 3: If anything had strengthened my resolve. They'd tried to silence me,
Speaker 3: and they'd failed. Every episode I recorded, every witness I interviewed,
Speaker 3: every story I shared, was a victory against the forces
Speaker 3: that wanted the truth to stay hidden. A week after
Speaker 3: the fire, the investigation took an unexpected turn. The ATF
Speaker 3: Bureau of Alcohol tobacco, firearms and explosives reached out to us.
Speaker 3: A young agent named Sarah Brown had been assigned to
Speaker 3: review the case. Unlike Sheriff Weston, she actually did her job,
Speaker 3: mister Patterson, The accelerant patterns at your property are consistent
Speaker 3: with professional grade and scendiary devices, she said during our
Speaker 3: first meeting. This wasn't some amateur with a gas can.
Speaker 3: Whoever did this had training. Will you be able to
Speaker 3: find them? I'm going to try, but I have to
Speaker 3: warn you there are forces pushing back on this investigation,
Speaker 3: people above my pay grade, asking questions about why federal
Speaker 3: resources are being used on a simple house fire.
Speaker 2: She met my eyes.
Speaker 3: Whatever you're doing with your podcast, your documentary, you've made
Speaker 3: some powerful enemies, I know. Then you should also know
Speaker 3: that you've made some allies. Not everyone in government wants
Speaker 3: these secrets kept. There are people who believe the public
Speaker 3: has a right to know. She handed me her card.
Speaker 3: Call me if anything else happens, and be careful. I
Speaker 3: showed Daniel the card that night. This could be a setup,
Speaker 3: he said. They've used fake allies before to gather intelligence. Maybe,
Speaker 3: but my gut says she's genuine. Someone who joined law
Speaker 3: enforcement to actually pursue justice, not cover it up. Daniel
Speaker 3: was quiet for a moment, like you were, Yeah, like
Speaker 3: I was. I looked out the window at the mountains.
Speaker 3: We keep going, the documentary, the podcast, all of it.
Speaker 3: They burned down our house, but they didn't destroy us,
Speaker 3: and the mount Saint Helen's documents are already out there,
Speaker 3: backed up in a dozen places, shared with journalists and
Speaker 3: researchers around the world.
Speaker 2: World. They can't put that genie back in the bottle.
Speaker 3: What about Austin, Have you heard anything? I shook my head.
Speaker 3: The question haunted me every day. Austin reeves somewhere in
Speaker 3: those mountains or nowhere at all, alive and living among
Speaker 3: the creatures are dead and buried in some unmarked hollow.
Speaker 3: The not knowing was the hardest part. We keep looking,
Speaker 3: I said, We keep telling the stories, and someday maybe
Speaker 3: we'll find our answers. I love you, Daniel said, you stubborn, idealistic,
Speaker 3: bigfoot chasing fool. I laughed, despite everything, I love you too.
Speaker 3: The production resumed a month later. Amanda had fought to
Speaker 3: keep the project alive after the fire. The network had
Speaker 3: gotten cold feet, the arson, the government pressure, the sense
Speaker 3: that this story was becoming dangerous in ways they hadn't anticipated.
Speaker 3: But Amanda convinced them that walking away would be worse,
Speaker 3: that the public would see it as cowardice, as complicity
Speaker 3: in the cover up. This is the biggest story any
Speaker 3: of us will ever work on, she told them, and
Speaker 3: we're going to tell it right. We filmed the remaining
Speaker 3: episodes with a renewed sense of purpose. The fire became
Speaker 3: part of the narrative, evidence of how far certain forces
Speaker 3: would go to keep the truth hidden. The witnesses we
Speaker 3: interviewed spoke with more urgency, now understanding that their stories
Speaker 3: might be the only protection any of us had. The
Speaker 3: community continued to grow, two million downloads per episode, three million.
Speaker 3: The foreign membership passed fifty thousand, then one hundred thousand,
Speaker 3: People from every walk of life, united by their experiences,
Speaker 3: their questions, their refusal to accept the official denials, and
Speaker 3: the evidence kept accumulating. The Mount Saint Helen's documents, the
Speaker 3: thermal footage from the PISGA, the audio recordings, the footprint casts,
Speaker 3: the witness testimonies that formed a pattern too consistent to dismiss.
Speaker 3: We were building something, something that couldn't be burned down,
Speaker 3: or silenced or covered up something bigger than any of us.
Speaker 3: I didn't know how it would end, didn't know if
Speaker 3: we'd ever get the definitive proof we were searching for,
Speaker 3: but I knew we wouldn't stop, couldn't stop, not until
Speaker 3: the world understood what we'd learned. The creatures were real,
Speaker 3: the cover up was real, and the truth was coming out,
Speaker 3: one story at a time. Chapter thirty three, The Expedition,
Speaker 3: the final episode of season one, would be filmed in
Speaker 3: the Pisca. It was Amanda's idea. She wanted to bring
Speaker 3: everything full circle, to return to the mountains where Austin
Speaker 3: Reeves had disappeared, where my own journey as a researcher
Speaker 3: had intensified, where the evidence was most compelling. This is
Speaker 3: where your story really began, she said during our planning meeting,
Speaker 3: the case that changed everything. We need to show the
Speaker 3: audience that place. I knew she was right, and I
Speaker 3: knew it would be the hardest episode to film. We
Speaker 3: assembled a small team, Amanda and her most trusted cameraman,
Speaker 3: Marcus Zach of course, serving as our guide and technical
Speaker 3: expert Daniel, who had been with me through all of it,
Speaker 3: and wasn't about to miss this final chapter, and doctor
Speaker 3: Rebecca Hartwell, the surgeon from the Mount Saint Helen's documents,
Speaker 3: who had agreed to appear on camera for the first time.
Speaker 3: We left before dawn on a Tuesday in October. The
Speaker 3: morning was cold and clear, the mountains painted in autumn colors,
Speaker 3: reds and golds against the dark green of the evergreens.
Speaker 3: The Pizga and Fall was one of the most beautiful
Speaker 3: places on Earth, and I felt a familiar ache watching
Speaker 3: the familiar ridgelines emerge from the morning mist. You okay,
Speaker 3: Daniel asked quietly, as our caravan wound up the forest
Speaker 3: service road.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Just remembering Austin, I nodded, and everything else. Mama, the
Speaker 3: first encounter, all those years of wondering what I'd seen,
Speaker 3: he put his hand on mine. You've come a long
Speaker 3: way from that scared kid, and liarly, some days I'm
Speaker 3: not sure I've come anywhere at all. We set up
Speaker 3: base camp in a remote section of the forest, far
Speaker 3: from any established trail. Zach had identified this area as
Speaker 3: a hotspot based on thermal imagery, audio recordings, and his
Speaker 3: network of local contacts. Multiple witnesses have reported activity here
Speaker 3: over the past six months, he explained to the camera,
Speaker 3: wood knocks, vocalizations, glimpses of large figures moving through the trees.
Speaker 3: This is as active as any location I've documented. The
Speaker 3: first day was spent exploring the terrain and setting up
Speaker 3: monitoring equipment, trail cameras, audio recorders, thermal imaging stations. We
Speaker 3: created a web of technology across twenty square acres designed
Speaker 3: to capture anything that moved through the area. Doctor Hartwell
Speaker 3: examined some unusual structures. We found broken branches arranged in
Speaker 3: deliberate patterns, stripped bark at heights no bear or human
Speaker 3: would reach, a strange circular formation of stones that Zack
Speaker 3: believed was an intentional marker. The patterns are consistent with
Speaker 3: what we documented at Mount Saint Helen's. She said, her
Speaker 3: scientific caution evident, even in this moment, I can't definitively
Speaker 3: say what created them, but I can say they don't
Speaker 3: match any known animal behavior. The second night we heard them.
Speaker 3: It started around midnight, a distant vocalization that sounded almost
Speaker 3: like a woman screaming, but sustained in a way no
Speaker 3: human could manage. Then another call answered from a different direction.
Speaker 3: Then another three individuals. Zack whispered minimum they're communicating. We
Speaker 3: caught glimpses on the thermal cameras heat signatures moving through
Speaker 3: the trees at the edge of our detection range, large bipedal,
Speaker 3: too fast and too deliberate to be bears. Stay tuned
Speaker 3: for more Sasquatch ott to see.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back.
Speaker 3: After these messages, Amanda had her crew filming everything, capturing
Speaker 3: our reactions, the equipment readouts, the sounds that echoed through
Speaker 3: the darkness. This is incredible, Marcus breathed, watching the thermal display.
Speaker 3: I've covered wars, disasters, everything, but this, I know, I said,
Speaker 3: it changes things, doesn't it. Knowing they're real, We never
Speaker 3: got a clear visual. They stayed just beyond the range
Speaker 3: of our cameras, moving parallel to our camp, watching us
Speaker 3: as we watched them. At one point, a wood knock
Speaker 3: came from less than one hundred yards away, a sharp
Speaker 3: crack that made everyone jump. I walked to the edge
Speaker 3: of our camp and spoke into the darkness. We're not
Speaker 3: here to hurt you. We're here to share your story
Speaker 3: with the world, to help people understand silence. Then, from
Speaker 3: somewhere in the trees, a low run, umbling vocalization, not threatening,
Speaker 3: almost acknowledging. I felt it then, that same sense I'd
Speaker 3: had as a child in liarly, a presence, an awareness,
Speaker 3: a connection to something old and powerful and patient. They know,
Speaker 3: I said quietly, they know what we're trying to do.
Speaker 3: On the third day, we found the footprints, a line
Speaker 3: of them crossing a muddy creek bed about a mile
Speaker 3: from our camp. Clear distinct, unmistakable, eighteen inches long, with
Speaker 3: visible tow impressions and dermal ridges. Zach cast them in
Speaker 3: plaster while doctor Hartwell documented every detail. These are the
Speaker 3: best prints I've ever collected, Zach said. The detail is extraordinary.
Speaker 3: You can see the flexion of the toes, the weight distribution.
Speaker 3: These weren't faked. No hoaxer could create something this anatomically correct.
Speaker 3: Doctor Hartwell was more measured, as always, The prints are
Speaker 3: consistent with a large bipedal primate. The dermal ridge patterns
Speaker 3: are unlike anything in the scientific literature. Whatever made these
Speaker 3: is unprecedented, real, Amanda said, capturing everything on camera, that's
Speaker 3: the word you're looking for, Doctor Hartwell, They're real. I'm
Speaker 3: a scientist. I don't use that word until the evidence
Speaker 3: is irrefutable, but she was smiling slightly. However, I will
Speaker 3: say that after what I saw at Mount Saint Helen's,
Speaker 3: after what I experienced on that operating table in nineteen eighty,
Speaker 3: I don't need to believe anymore.
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 3: We broke camp on the fourth day, loaded with footage
Speaker 3: and audio recordings and the best physical evidence any team
Speaker 3: had ever collected. Not the definitive proof that would convince
Speaker 3: every skeptic, but enough enough to keep the conversation going,
Speaker 3: enough to inspire others to look closer. As we made
Speaker 3: our way back to the vehicles, I stopped at a
Speaker 3: familiar ridge. In the distance. I could see the canyon
Speaker 3: where Austin Reeves had vantaged, where I'd found his camera,
Speaker 3: where the trail had gone cold. We'll find him, Daniel said,
Speaker 3: reading my thoughts as he always did. Will We maybe
Speaker 3: not the way you want, but you'll find answers you
Speaker 3: always do. I stared at those distant peaks, wondering what
Speaker 3: secrets they still held, wondering if Austin was alive somewhere
Speaker 3: in that vast wilderness, living among the creatures he'd gone
Speaker 3: to find, or if he died there another victim of
Speaker 3: the mystery that had consumed so many lives. I'm not done,
Speaker 3: I said, this isn't the end. I know it's never
Speaker 3: the end with you, I smiled, despite the ache in
Speaker 3: my chest. That's why you love me, one of the reasons.
Speaker 3: We walked back to the vehicles together, leaving the mountains
Speaker 3: behind for now. Chapter thirty four. The broadcast the documentary
Speaker 3: aired on a Tuesday night in October, exactly one year
Speaker 3: after the fire that had destroyed our home. I watched
Speaker 3: from the new house we'd built on the same property,
Speaker 3: bigger than the one they'd burned, stronger, designed to last.
Speaker 3: The recording studio was in a separate building, now fire
Speaker 3: proofed and backed up to servers in three different states.
Speaker 3: They could burn it down again, it wouldn't matter. The
Speaker 3: work would survive. Daniel sat beside me, his hand in mine,
Speaker 3: as the credits rolled in the first episode began. Across America,
Speaker 3: there are those who have seen things they cannot explain.
Speaker 3: Amanda's voice, rich and measured, filled the living room. Images
Speaker 3: of wilderness filled the screen, the Olympic Peninsula, the Ozarks,
Speaker 3: the Pizgah, all the places we'd visited over the past year.
Speaker 3: Then the faces of witnesses, one after another, sharing their stories.
Speaker 3: Earl Hutchins, Bobby Dean Carver, Margaret lynkevist Samuel Jackson, doctor
Speaker 3: Rebecca Hartwell, dozens of others whose encounters we documented, whose
Speaker 3: voices deserved to be heard. The fire was included, the
Speaker 3: ruins of our home, the accelerant patterns, the evidence of
Speaker 3: arson that law enforcement had ignored. Amanda had framed it
Speaker 3: as what it was, an attempt to silence the truth,
Speaker 3: an attempt that had failed. The Mount Saint Helen's documents
Speaker 3: featured prominently in the third episode, the Classified Project Vulcan files,
Speaker 3: the witness testimonies about recovered bodies, doctor Hartwell's account of
Speaker 3: treating a dying specimen in a military hospital, evidence of
Speaker 3: a cover up that stretched back decades, and the final
Speaker 3: episode showed our expedition to the Pisca. The vocalizations in
Speaker 3: the night, the thermal signatures moving through the trees, the
Speaker 3: footprints with their dermal ridges and anatomical precision. No definitive
Speaker 3: footage of a creature, no face to face contact captured
Speaker 3: on camera, but something more valuable in its way, a pattern,
Speaker 3: a weight of evidence that added up to some undeniable
Speaker 3: after one hundred and fifty years of sightings. Amanda's voice concluded,
Speaker 3: after thousands of witnesses and countless attempts at documentation, one
Speaker 3: question remains, what is hiding in the forests of North America.
Speaker 3: The evidence we've gathered cannot answer that question definitively, but
Speaker 3: it can tell us this something. Is there, something real,
Speaker 3: something that has shared this continent with us for longer
Speaker 3: than we know, and perhaps it's time we started listening.
Speaker 3: The response was overwhelming. Within the first hour, social media exploded.
Speaker 3: Within the first week, the documentary had been viewed over
Speaker 3: twenty million times. Within the first month, it had sparked
Speaker 3: a national conversation about what was hiding in our wilderness.
Speaker 3: Not everyone believed. The skeptics were as vocal as ever,
Speaker 3: dismissing the evidence, attacking the witnesses, explaining away every data
Speaker 3: point that was fine, that was how it had to be.
Speaker 3: Science didn't advance through blind acceptance. It advanced through rigorous debate,
Speaker 3: through challenge, through the slow accumulation of evidence that eventually
Speaker 3: became undeniable. But for every skeptic, there were others who
Speaker 3: reached out, Scientists who'd been afraid to pursue the subject
Speaker 3: now emboldened by the documentary's success. Witnesses who'd kept their
Speaker 3: stories secret for decades, finally finding the courage to speak,
Speaker 3: Researchers who'd worked in isolation, now discovering a community of
Speaker 3: others who shared their conviction. The podcast grew ten million
Speaker 3: downloads per episode than twenty million. The FORIM membership exploded,
Speaker 3: becoming a hub for researchers and witnesses around the world,
Speaker 3: and the threats continued. More visits from the men in black,
Speaker 3: more pressure from unnamed government sources, more attempts to discredit,
Speaker 3: to silence, to suppress. We weathered it all. We'd learned
Speaker 3: to expect it by now. Every attack was a sign
Speaker 3: that we were doing something right, that we were getting
Speaker 3: close to something they didn't want revealed. Six months after
Speaker 3: the broadcast, I received a visit from agent Sarah Brown.
Speaker 3: She came to the house on a Sunday morning, looking exhausted,
Speaker 3: but determined the investigation into the fire had been officially
Speaker 3: closed inconclusive. They'd called it despite the evidence she'd gathered.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, she said, I tried, but there are walls
Speaker 3: I can't get pasted. People with more power than I have,
Speaker 3: who want this to go away. I know.
Speaker 2: Thank you for trying.
Speaker 3: I'm not done. She handed me a thumb drive. This
Speaker 3: is everything I've collected, the evidence from the fire, but
Speaker 3: also other things. Files I've come across in my work,
Speaker 3: cases that were buried, witnesses who were silenced. There's a pattern,
Speaker 3: mister Patterson, a systematic effort to suppress this subject that
Speaker 3: goes back to the nineteen fifties at least maybe further.
Speaker 3: Why are you giving this to me because you're the
Speaker 3: one who'll do something with it. You've proven that you
Speaker 3: don't stop, She smiled tiredly. I can't fight them from
Speaker 3: inside the system, but you can fight them from outside.
Speaker 3: Take this. Tell the stories they don't want told. After
Speaker 3: she left, I sat for a long time looking at
Speaker 3: the thumb drive, another piece of the puzzle, another thread
Speaker 3: in the vast web of secrecy and cover up that
Speaker 3: I'd been unraveling for years. The work was never done,
Speaker 3: the truth was never fully revealed, but piece by piece,
Speaker 3: story by story, we were getting closer. The podcast continues.
Speaker 3: The documentary has been renewed for a second season. The
Speaker 3: community grows larger every day, united by shared experiences and
Speaker 3: a common purpose. I still don't have all the answers.
Speaker 3: I still don't know what happened to Austin Reeves. I
Speaker 3: still don't know the full extent of the government's knowledge,
Speaker 3: or why they've worked so hard to keep these creatures hidden.
Speaker 3: But I know more than I did when I was
Speaker 3: twelve years old, standing in a moonlit hollow in Georgia
Speaker 3: seeing something that would change my life forever. I know
Speaker 3: they're real. I know they've been here longer than we have.
Speaker 3: I know they're intelligent, perhaps more intelligent than we give
Speaker 3: them credit for. And I know that someday, somehow the
Speaker 3: truth will come out completely, not through me alone, through
Speaker 3: all of us who have seen, who have believed, who
Speaker 3: have refused to be silenced, through the witnesses who share
Speaker 3: their stories, and the researchers who collect the evidence, and
Speaker 3: the ordinary people who simply refuse to accept that the
Speaker 3: official denials can be the whole truth. We're building something,
Speaker 3: a record, a testament, a foundation for the day when
Speaker 3: the questions will finally be answered. That day may not
Speaker 3: come in my lifetime, but it will come. I believe
Speaker 3: that now more than I've ever believed anything. Daniel is
Speaker 3: calling me for dinner. The smell of his cooking drifts
Speaker 3: through the house, something with garlic and herbs. He's gotten
Speaker 3: good at this over the years, finding ways to ground me.
Speaker 3: When I get too lost in the work, too consumed
Speaker 3: by the questions that never fully resolve, I'll close my
Speaker 3: laptop and go join him. We'll eat together, talk about
Speaker 3: nothing and everything, fall asleep in each other's arms like
Speaker 3: we have for the past decade. And tomorrow I'll start again.
Speaker 3: Another interview, another story, another small piece of the truth
Speaker 3: added to the vast tapestry we're weaving. The odyssey continues,
Speaker 3: it always will. Part six deeper into the Mystery, Chapter
Speaker 3: thirty five. The weight of stories. The frustration didn't end
Speaker 3: with Derek Fontaine. As the podcast grew, so did the
Speaker 3: volume of questionable accounts. For every genuine witness who reached out,
Speaker 3: there seemed to be three or four others whose stories
Speaker 3: fell apart under even basic scrutiny. Some were obvious fabrications,
Speaker 3: people who'd clearly read, searched existing cases, and cobbled together
Speaker 3: elements to create their own encounters. Others were more troubling,
Speaker 3: sincere individuals whose memories had been shaped by expectation, by
Speaker 3: media consumption, by the powerful human need to be part
Speaker 3: of something larger than themselves. Learning to distinguish between these
Speaker 3: categories became an essential skill. I developed a mental checklist.
Speaker 3: Did the details remain consistent across multiple tellings. Did the
Speaker 3: witness seem more interested in the experience itself or in
Speaker 3: the attention it might bring. Were there specific verifiable elements
Speaker 3: a date, a location, a corroborating witness, or was everything
Speaker 3: conveniently vague? Most importantly, did the story ring true? After
Speaker 3: hundreds of interviews, I developed an instinct for authenticity. It
Speaker 3: wasn't fool proof, but it helped me navigate the endless
Speaker 3: stream of accounts that flooded my inbox. One week, in particular,
Speaker 3: tested my patience to its life limits. On Monday, I
Speaker 3: interviewed a woman from Oregon who claimed she'd been communicating
Speaker 3: telepathically with a family of sasquatch for the past fifteen years.
Speaker 3: The creatures, she said, had taught her their language and
Speaker 3: shared with her the secrets of the universe. When I
Speaker 3: asked for any verifiable detail, a location, a physical description,
Speaker 3: something that could be confirmed, she became evasive, insisting that
Speaker 3: the creatures had forbidden her from sharing such information. With
Speaker 3: non believers. On Tuesday, it was a teenager from Texas
Speaker 3: who'd clearly watched too many horror movies. His encounter featured
Speaker 3: elements lifted directly from three different films I recognized, complete
Speaker 3: with dialogue that sounded like it had been written by
Speaker 3: a screenwriter with a loose grip on reality. On Wednesday,
Speaker 3: a retired professor from Michigan spent two hours explaining his
Speaker 3: theory that Sasquatch were actually time travelers from the future,
Speaker 3: sent back to observe humanity's final centuries before extinction. He
Speaker 3: had charged arts, he had equations, He had absolutely no
Speaker 3: evidence whatsoever.
Speaker 2: By Thursday, I was ready to quit.
Speaker 3: Daniel found me in the studio staring at my computer screen,
Speaker 3: the cursor blinking on an unsent email that would have
Speaker 3: told my next scheduled interviewee that I was canceling bad week,
Speaker 3: he asked, setting a cup of coffee beside me. The
Speaker 3: worst I feel like I'm drowning in nonsense. For every
Speaker 3: real story, there are a dozen fantasies, and I can't
Speaker 3: shake the feeling that I'm wasting my time, that no
Speaker 3: matter how many genuine encounters I document, they'll always be
Speaker 3: buried under a mountain of garbage. Daniel pulled up a
Speaker 3: chair and sat down beside me. Remember why you started this,
Speaker 3: to give witnesses a voice, to document the truth, and
Speaker 3: you're doing that every episode. You're doing exactly that. But
Speaker 3: the noise, the noise is the price of admission. You
Speaker 3: can't reach the real witnesses without wading through the fakes.
Speaker 3: It's frustrating, but it's necessary. He put his hand on
Speaker 3: my shoulder, and stay tuned for mar sasquatch Oat to see.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back. After these messages.
Speaker 3: You've helped hundreds of people tell their stories, hundreds of
Speaker 3: real people with real experiences, who felt validated for the
Speaker 3: first time in their lives. That matters. That's worth the frustration.
Speaker 3: I looked at the email i'd been about to send
Speaker 3: at the name of the next interviewee, a woman from
Speaker 3: Georgia named Lucille Marsh, who'd written a heartfelt letter about
Speaker 3: an encounter she'd had as a child in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 3: She'd never told anyone. She said she was eighty two
Speaker 3: years old and wanted to share her story before it
Speaker 3: was too late. I deleted the cancelation and wrote a
Speaker 3: different message, looking forward to our conversation tomorrow. Lucille Marsh
Speaker 3: turned out to be one of the most memorable interviews
Speaker 3: I ever conducted.
Speaker 2: Her voice was soft but clear.
Speaker 3: Carrying the weight of decades and the careful precision of
Speaker 3: a generation that valued truth. She'd grown up on a
Speaker 3: farm in rural Georgia, not far from where I'd had
Speaker 3: my own encounter, and lyrely a coincidence that made me
Speaker 3: lean forward in my chair as she began to speak.
Speaker 3: It was the summer of nineteen fifty three, Lucille said,
Speaker 3: I was nine years old. We had a farm about
Speaker 3: twenty miles outside of Rome, Georgia. Cotton, mostly, some corn,
Speaker 3: a few dairy cows. My daddy worked that land from
Speaker 3: sun up to sundown, and us children helped. However we
Speaker 3: could tell me about the encounter. Well, it was late August,
Speaker 3: I remember that much. The cotton was coming in good
Speaker 3: that year, and Daddy had hired some extra hands to
Speaker 3: help with the harvest. I'd been sent to fetch water
Speaker 3: from the spring. We had a natural spring about a
Speaker 3: quarter mile from the house, back in a little hollow
Speaker 3: where the trees grew thick. What happened at the spring,
Speaker 3: I was filling my bucket when I heard something moving
Speaker 3: in the brush. At first I thought it was a deer.
Speaker 3: We had plenty of them around, so I stayed still
Speaker 3: and quiet to see it. But what stepped out of
Speaker 3: those trees wasn't any deer. Can you describe it? It
Speaker 3: was tall, taller than any man I'd ever seen, even
Speaker 3: taller than mister Henderson, who ran the general store in
Speaker 3: town and stood six foot five if he was an inch.
Speaker 3: But this thing was broader too, massive shoulders, long arms
Speaker 3: covered head to toe, and dark brown hair, and the
Speaker 3: face she paused. The face was almost human, almost, But
Speaker 3: there was something different about it, something old, something that
Speaker 3: looked at me like at new things. I couldn't even imagine.
Speaker 2: What did it do? Nothing?
Speaker 3: At first, we just stood there, maybe twenty feet apart,
Speaker 3: looking at each other. I was terrified, of course, nine
Speaker 3: years old, alone in the woods facing something that shouldn't exist.
Speaker 3: But there was something else too, curiosity maybe or wonder.
Speaker 3: I remember thinking that this must be what the Bible
Speaker 3: meant when it talked about giants in the earth. How
Speaker 3: long did the encounter last?
Speaker 2: A minute?
Speaker 3: Maybe two? It felt like forever. And then it did
Speaker 3: something I'll never forget. It reached down and picked up
Speaker 3: a stone, just a regular riverstone, smooth and round, and
Speaker 3: it held it out toward me like it was offering
Speaker 3: me a gift. Did you take it? I was too scared.
Speaker 3: I just stood there, frozen, And after a while it
Speaker 3: set the stone down on a big flat rock by
Speaker 3: the spring, turned around and walked back into the trees.
Speaker 3: Didn't run, just walked, calm as could be.
Speaker 2: What did you do? Then?
Speaker 3: I grabbed my bucket and ran home as fast as
Speaker 3: my legs would carry me. Didn't tell nobody what I'd seen.
Speaker 3: Who would have believed me a little girl claiming she'd
Speaker 3: seen a monster in the woods. They would have thought
Speaker 3: I was touched in the head. Did you ever go
Speaker 3: back to the spring every day?
Speaker 2: I had to.
Speaker 3: That was my chore, fetching water. But I never saw
Speaker 3: the creature again. What I did see was the stone.
Speaker 3: It stayed right there on that flat rock for years.
Speaker 3: Nobody moved it, nobody touched it. It was like a reminder,
Speaker 3: a sign that what I'd seen was real? Do you
Speaker 3: still have the stone? Lucille was quiet for a moment.
Speaker 3: Then I do. When we sold the farm in nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy two, I went back to that spring one last time.
Speaker 2: The stone was.
Speaker 3: Still there, right where the creature had left it. I
Speaker 3: picked it up and took it with me. I've had
Speaker 3: it ever since. Could you describe it? It's nothing special
Speaker 3: to look at, just a riverstone, gray with some white streaks,
Speaker 3: about the size of an egg. But when I hold it,
Speaker 3: her voice caught. When I hold it, I feel connected
Speaker 3: to something, something old and wise and far beyond my understanding.
Speaker 3: It's like holding a piece of that creature, a piece
Speaker 3: of that moment, a piece of the truth that I've
Speaker 3: carried with me for seventy years. Lucille's interview it reminded
Speaker 3: me why I did this work, not for the dramatic
Speaker 3: encounters or the sensational stories, for the quiet moments, for
Speaker 3: the people like Lucille who'd carried these experiences in silence
Speaker 3: for decades, waiting for someone to believe them, For the
Speaker 3: truth that existed beneath all the noise, patient and persistent,
Speaker 3: waiting to be heard. I asked Lucille if she'd be
Speaker 3: willing to share a photograph of the stone, and she agreed.
Speaker 3: When the image arrived in my email the next day,
Speaker 3: I stared at it for a long time. An ordinary riverstone,
Speaker 3: smooth and gray, unremarkable in every way except for what
Speaker 3: it represented, a moment of contact, a gift offered and
Speaker 3: eventually accepted, a connection across species, across decades, across the
Speaker 3: vast gulf that separated humans from the creatures we were
Speaker 3: only beginning to understand. I saved the image and added
Speaker 3: it to the episode. And when the response came in
Speaker 3: hundreds of messages from people who'd been moved by Lucille's story,
Speaker 3: who'd been inspired by her courage and finally speaking up,
Speaker 3: I knew that the frustration was worth it. Every time
Speaker 3: Chapter thirty six, Encounters in the Heartland the Midwest interviews
Speaker 3: brought a different flavor to the podcast. The Southeast had
Speaker 3: its swamps and hollows, the Pacific Northwest had its ancient forests,
Speaker 3: but the American Heartland had something unique, farmland that butted
Speaker 3: up against remnant woodlands, small towns surrounded by fields that
Speaker 3: stretched to the horizon, and people whose matter of fact
Speaker 3: approach to life extended even to the impossible. I'm not
Speaker 3: the type to make things up, said Harold Gustafson, a
Speaker 3: seventy three year old dairy farmer from Wisconsin. Ask anyone
Speaker 3: who knows me, thirty years on the county board, forty
Speaker 3: years running this farm. I don't have time for nonsense.
Speaker 3: But you saw something? I saw something. October of two
Speaker 3: thousand and three. I was out in the barn around
Speaker 3: four in the morning, starting the milking. The cows were agitated,
Speaker 3: wouldn't settle down, kept looking toward the back of the barn,
Speaker 3: where the doors were opened, to the paddock.
Speaker 2: What did you find?
Speaker 3: At first, nothing, I walked back to check, thinking maybe
Speaker 3: a coyote had spooked them. But when I looked out
Speaker 3: into the paddock, I saw it standing right there by
Speaker 3: the fence line, maybe fifty yards away. Massive thing had
Speaker 3: to be eight feet tall, just standing there watching the barn.
Speaker 3: Could you see it clearly? Clear enough? The yard light
Speaker 3: was on and the moon was up. It was covered
Speaker 3: in dark hair, standing upright like a man. When it
Speaker 3: saw me looking, it turned and walked toward the tree line.
Speaker 3: Didn't run, just walked, and it stepped right over the fence,
Speaker 3: a four foot fence, and it didn't even break stride,
Speaker 3: just stepped over it like it was nothing. Did you
Speaker 3: report the sighting to who the sheriff would have laughed
Speaker 3: me out of his office. My wife thought I was
Speaker 3: seeing things. My kids still think I made it up
Speaker 3: to get attention. Harold's voice hardened. But I know what
Speaker 3: I saw. Sixty years of farming, and I've never seen
Speaker 3: anything like it. Bears don't walk upright, Deer don't clear
Speaker 3: four foot fences without jumping. Whatever that thing was, it
Speaker 3: wasn't from around here. Have you seen it since? Not seen?
Speaker 3: But I found things. Tracks in the mud by the creek,
Speaker 3: way too big for any person. Deer carcasses in the
Speaker 3: woods with the bones cracked open for marrow, and I
Speaker 3: mean cracked like someone hit them with a hammer. Something's
Speaker 3: been living in those woods for years, maybe decades, And
Speaker 3: until you called, I never had anyone to tell. From Iowa,
Speaker 3: I interviewed a woman named Constance Meyer who'd had an
Speaker 3: encounter while driving home from a late shift at the
Speaker 3: hospital where she worked as a nurse. It was December
Speaker 3: twenty eleven. Constance said, snowing, hard, visibility, maybe one hundred feet.
Speaker 3: I was on County Road fourteen, about five miles from
Speaker 3: my house. That stretch goes through a river bottom, lots
Speaker 3: of timber, not many houses, what happened? Something ran across
Speaker 3: the road in front of me. I had to slam
Speaker 3: on my brakes to avoid hitting it. At first I
Speaker 3: thought it was a deer, but then I realized it
Speaker 3: was running on two legs and it was huge. When
Speaker 3: it reached the other side of the road, it had
Speaker 3: to duck under a branch that I know was at
Speaker 3: least seven feet off the ground. Did you get a
Speaker 3: good look at it? Only for a second. My headlights
Speaker 3: caught it as it crossed brown hair, massive build arms
Speaker 3: that hung down past its knees, and fast, God, it
Speaker 3: was fast. It covered that two lane highway and maybe
Speaker 3: three strides.
Speaker 2: What did you do?
Speaker 3: I sat there in my car, shaking, trying to convince
Speaker 3: myself I hadn't seen what I'd just seen. Then I
Speaker 3: drove home as fast as the snow would let me
Speaker 3: and didn't tell anyone For years.
Speaker 2: I was a nurse.
Speaker 3: I was supposed to be rational, scientific. If I started
Speaker 3: talking about Bigfoot, people would have thought I'd lost my mind.
Speaker 3: Why are you talking about it now? Because I found
Speaker 3: your podcast, because I heard other people telling stories just
Speaker 3: like mine. Because I realized I wasn't crazy that this thing,
Speaker 3: whatever it is, is real, and if I can help
Speaker 3: other people understand that, help them feel less alone, then
Speaker 3: maybe something good can come out of what scared the
Speaker 3: hell out of me. On that road from Nebraska, I
Speaker 3: spoke with a rancher named Bill Thornton, whose family had
Speaker 3: been reporting encounters for three generations. My grandfather saw them
Speaker 3: back in the thirties. Bill said, my father saw them
Speaker 3: in the sixties, and I've seen them twice, once in
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty seven, once in twenty nineteen. Whatever these things are,
Speaker 3: they've been on this land longer than my family has.
Speaker 3: Tell me about your encounters. The first one, I was
Speaker 3: sixteen working cattle in the sand Hills north Pasture. It
Speaker 3: was evening getting dark. I was on horseback pushing some
Speaker 3: strays back toward the main herd when my horse spooked,
Speaker 3: just stopped dead and wouldn't go forward no matter what
Speaker 3: I did.
Speaker 2: What was spooking the horse?
Speaker 3: I didn't see it at first, just felt something watching,
Speaker 3: you know, that feeling like eyes on the back of
Speaker 3: your neck. I looked around, and that's when I spotted it,
Speaker 3: standing in a draw about one hundred yards away, half
Speaker 3: hidden by the tall grass, watching me.
Speaker 2: Can you describe it? Tall?
Speaker 3: Brown, shaped like a man, but bigger. It was getting dark,
Speaker 3: so I couldn't see details, but I saw enough to
Speaker 3: know it wasn't a bear or a cow or anything
Speaker 3: else that belonged out there. And the way it stood
Speaker 3: so still, so patient, It was like it was waiting
Speaker 3: to see what I'd do.
Speaker 2: What did you do?
Speaker 3: I turned that horse around and rode like hell back
Speaker 3: to the house. Told my father what I'd seen. He
Speaker 3: didn't laugh, didn't call me crazy, just nodded and said
Speaker 3: they've been here a long time. Leave them alone and they'll.
Speaker 2: Leave you alone. That was it.
Speaker 3: End of discussion and the second encounter twenty nineteen. I
Speaker 3: was driving the ranch road at night, coming back from
Speaker 3: checking on a sick heifer. Something crossed in front of
Speaker 3: my truck, big bipedal, moving fast. I stopped and got
Speaker 3: out shine my spotlight into the grass. Nothing there, but
Speaker 3: I could hear it moving, circling around behind me, and
Speaker 3: I could smell it, that smell everyone talks about, like
Speaker 3: a dead animal and a wet dog had a baby.
Speaker 2: Were you afraid? Not really?
Speaker 3: Cautious maybe, But I remembered what my father said, leave
Speaker 3: them alone and they'll leave you alone. So I got
Speaker 3: back in my truck and drove home. I haven't seen
Speaker 3: anything since, but I know they're still out there. They've
Speaker 3: always been out there, and they always will be. The
Speaker 3: Heartland interviews revealed something important. These creatures weren't confined to
Speaker 3: wilderness areas. They'd adapted to agricultural landscapes, living in the margins,
Speaker 3: the river bottoms, the wood lots, the wild places that
Speaker 3: existed between the fields. They'd learned to coexist with human activity,
Speaker 3: staying hidden, watching from the edges, making themselves known only
Speaker 3: when circumstances forced their hand. It was a testament to
Speaker 3: their intelligence, their adaptability, their determination to survive in a
Speaker 3: world that was increasingly hostile to anything wild. And it
Speaker 3: made me wonder how many other places had they colonized
Speaker 3: without anyone noticing, how many encounters had happened and been dismissed, forgotten,
Speaker 3: buried under the weight of rational denial. The answer, I
Speaker 3: was beginning to realize was more than anyone could count.
Speaker 1: Di in in in
Speaker 3: To